The present invention is directed to an apparatus for reproducing images, more particularly to a compact image reproducing apparatus that prints images so as to minimize printing time and print material waste.
Digital photography is rapidly gaining in popularity, with original images captured both with digital cameras and with conventional cameras and film that is subsequently processed and digitally scanned. Photographic manufacturers have introduced photofinishing apparatus adapted to produce digitally printed images from unprocessed film, processed film, or various digital file inputs. Examples are the QD-21 minilab from Konica, the Frontier(trademark) Digital Lab System from Fuji Photo Film, and the QSS(trademark)-2711 from Noritsu Koki. However, all these systems produce prints on silver halide photographic paper, and they therefore require a wet chemical process to produce the color prints. Other systems are known that use processed film or digital files as inputs to produce photographic quality prints without silver halide paper and its accompanying wet process. For example, the Kodak Picture Maker produces thermal dye transfer prints, and the Canon Hyperphoto produces ink jet prints. Both these systems are suitable for a customer making a small number of reprints and enlargements from selected images, but they produce prints too slowly to be practical for standard, multi-image customer orders. The Canon Hyperphoto is further disadvantaged by its large footprint. There is a therefore a need for a compact image reproduction apparatus that can rapidly produce high-quality prints without requiring a wet paper process.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,565,902 of Nardone et al. (Atlantek) describes a thermal dye transfer printer configured to print on continuous roll media and sever individual prints while minimizing media waste. The printer of this invention is incapable of printing speeds needed for rapidly fulfilling a multi-image customer order.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,768,675 of E. A. Estabrooks (Intermec) describes an on-demand narrow web electrophotographic printer for printing tickets, labels, etc. with low material waste. The invention is focused on intermittent, on-demand printing of tickets and labels, and as such it does not recognize or address the challenges of rapidly printing a plurality of images associated with one or more customer orders.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,831 of R. Grenda generally describes high speed printing using an array of low speed printers and specifically describes various means for collating pages of a single job distributed to multiple printers. In this reference, the printing of individual pages is staggered so that they arrive at the collator in the correct order. Each image is produced on a single page, leading to waste or complexity or both when printing images of differing dimensions. Also, in practice, it is very difficult to calibrate multiple printers to produce uniformly accurate color balance and tone scale. Thus, the color characteristics of a customer""s prints produced by such a system would be variable and objectionable.
A printer capable of increasing printing resolution is described in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/188,574 of A. Lubinsky, filed Nov. 9, 1998. In one embodiment, the printer prints on a section of media that remains part of a continuous roll. This approach suffers the potential disadvantage of smearing the freshly-printed image or transferring ink to the backside of media contacted by the image as it is rolled up after printing.
U.S. Pat. No. 5, 576,794 of J. C. DeMarti, Jr. et al. (Eastman Kodak) describes a photofinishing method in which rolls of films are developed in batches and printed in different batches. For a given roll of film, images are printed in capture order. This reference fails to recognize, let alone solve, the problems associated with low-waste printing of a collection of individual images having different dimensions.
There remains a need for a compact image reproduction apparatus with a dry or apparently-dry digital printer capable of rapidly producing high quality photographic images with low waste.
It is an object of the present invention to rapidly produce printed images without using the wet chemical processes associated with silver halide print media.
It is a further object of the invention to produced printed images with minimal waste of the print media.
It is a further object of the invention to minimize the time required to produce a customer order comprising a plurality of printed images.
It is a further object of the invention to complete multiple pending customer orders in minimum time.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention there is provided a computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer program thereon which when loaded onto a computer will cause the computer to perform the following steps:
b) analyzing the customer image order and organizing said plurality of digital images in a printing sequence defining at least one batch of images for placement on a media segment on a variable calculated length and for determining said variable calculated length taking into consideration the number of images in said customer order, maximum length of a platen on which said media is to be placed and the size of the images to be printed.
The above, and other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become more apparent from the accompanying detailed description thereof when considered in conjunction with the following drawings.